Half-Sick of Shadows (2 page)

Sections of the Manse, the original building, still stood; they were built into newer sections with thicker walls designed to hide and support them. Sections of wall from the nineteenth century were visible, but all the rest came from the early twentieth. Even when we were tiny children Sophia and I were used to feeling the chills that suddenly were where no chills were before – like the dead passing through. Mother would tell us to close the door and keep the cold out. I thought the Cold was an entity, like the Bogeyman. The Cold, the Dark, and the Bogeyman were a supernatural trinity, like God but less spiteful. Of all the entities in the Manse and the land around it, the Cold filled it least balefully. We had learned to live with the Cold. Only the kitchen remained warm day and night and through the seasons.

‘A large black dog,’ said the stranger. ‘Have you seen one?’

‘Is it yours?’

‘Yes. In a manner of speaking. You’ve seen it, then?’

‘It was in the cemetery a minute ago.’

‘Good! Then I’m in the correct place. And you are, unless I’ve made an error, Edward.’ I neither denied nor confirmed it. He hadn’t asked me to. ‘I won’t take up much of your time, Edward. No doubt you’re busy doing whatever small boys do. I need to ask a permission of you. It won’t work, at least not with complete success, unless I have your permission. May I ask?’

‘Yes.’

‘Will you be my friend?’

Gosh! I didn’t know what to say. Nor did I see why he shouldn’t be my friend if he wanted to. Some years of life and experience were necessary before I would think of such things as what we might have
in
common. The notion of ulterior motives was unknown to me. I’d never been told not to talk to strangers. I didn’t know any strangers. I didn’t know many not strangers either.

‘Sophia’s my friend,’ I said. ‘She’s my sister.’

‘Is that her?’

‘Yes?’

‘My word … Yes … Yes indeed … I wouldn’t want to be your very best friend, Edward,’ he said. ‘I’d never want to replace Sophia as your very best and special friend. If I could be just an ordinary friend, that would do nicely. May we be friends?’

‘All right,’ I said with a smile.

We shook on it.

‘Now, listen to me, Edward, my friend. What I’m about to say may be important, and you need to remember it.’ I listened hard with both ears, my eyebrows lowered and my neck stuck out. ‘You may, one day, want something from your friend … from me.’

‘What like?’

‘I don’t know. But something important. When you want it, all you have to do is ask. Is that clear?’ Clear as porridge. I didn’t know whether to shake my head or nod it. ‘Ask and it shall be given unto you, as the good book says. Seek and ye shall find.’

‘That’s from the bible.’

‘Correct! What a clever chap you are, Edward. I’m pleased about that, because our friendship will change this social and cerebral milieu. You shall witness change. Indeed, my intervention necessitates change. Time itself, which you think fixed, may on occasions warp back on itself. But let’s hope it doesn’t happen too often. Ours is very much a friendship that requires a clever chap … Is that your mother?’ he asked, looking past me again.

‘Yes.’

‘And are those boys your siblings?’

‘No. That’s my brother Gregory and my brother Edgar.’

‘Gregory looks like a strapping fellow. Do you think he could
help
me push my time machine? It’s rather stuck at the moment.’

I yelled at the back door. ‘He wants Gregory to help him push his time machine out of the mud.’ Nobody moved. Mother’s hands might have tightened fractionally on Sophia’s shoulders.

Turning square on to the back door, having taken a step closer to it, I yelled harder. ‘He wants Gregory to help him push his time machine out of the mud.’

A vacuum followed my second yell, as though I were in a bubble, like a reindeer in a glass orb that snows when you shake it. Except I existed in my bubble, sensate, alive, a physical entity, and everything outside was plastic, stiff, inanimate. I began to feel very claustrophobic in there, until, just when I couldn’t hold my breath any longer, Mother moved. Her head turned towards Gregory and she said something. Gregory hesitated before coming forward, pausing, then approaching me and the stranger.

‘Sir, you have my warmest gratitude,’ said the stranger. ‘Our combined weight should get it over the rut.’ He led the way to the rear of his machine. Gregory followed. I followed too, but only halfway. Silver letters on the front of the machine spelled
MORRIS MINOR
.

At first, the rut looked too deep for them to succeed. I couldn’t see the stranger at the far side. Gregory’s face turned red. But they got the machine rocking, and eventually it rocked over the rut.

‘We did it!’ exclaimed the stranger, and shook Gregory by the hand. ‘Thank you, sir. Thank you.’ As he wiped his hands with a handkerchief, Gregory ran back to Mother.

The stranger got into the machine and it came alive with a roar. I watched as it circled the courtyard and slowed to walking speed before stopping where I stood too much in awe to do other than stand and watch. A window in the machine sank, allowing the stranger inside to speak to me.

‘Thank you for being my friend.’

I wanted to ask him something, many things, but didn’t know what any of them were. The window went up again, separating him from
me
, and the machine took off. ‘What’s transportation technology?’ I thought, too late.

The machine diminished in size as it went up the Lane.

Frizzle. Vanish.

2

The Night of Our Final Flight

It was darker than night but warm and giggly where we were. ‘Who’s the man that came here today?’ asked Sophia. Before I had a chance to ask ‘What man?’ our bedroom door opened and we shushed.

‘Oh my goodness! Where could they be? The Bogeyman must have stolen Edward and Sophia. There’s nothing here, in their bedroom, but a hump in the bed, underneath the blankets.’

The hump was us and Mother didn’t know. We put our hands over our mouths and giggled while trying not to.

‘They’ll miss dinner if the Bogeyman doesn’t bring them back and they’re not downstairs in five minutes.’ (Tee-hee-hee!) ‘It’s strawberry jam on toast and hot, sweet tea … when you’re done.’

Our bedroom door closed.

‘Five minutes,’ said Sophia.

‘Strawberry jam on toast.’

‘Who is he?’ asked Sophia, one half of the blanket-hump.

‘Who?’

‘The man that Gregory pushed his machine out of the mud.’

I’d forgotten about him. ‘I don’t know.’

‘What did he want?’

‘I don’t know … To be my friend.’

‘Why did he want to be your friend?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I’m your friend.’

‘You’re allowed more than one.’ I hadn’t known you’re allowed to have more than one friend until the stranger told me. ‘You’re my best friend.’

‘I’m your best friend,’ she repeated, with a giggle in her voice.

The mystery of the stranger and his time machine puzzled me for as long as the memory of it lasted, which, when you’re stupidly young, isn’t long. I’d more or less forgotten about it again by strawberry jam on toast and sweet tea time.

After strawberry jam on toast and sweet tea, after our trips outside with our bowels – which seldom moved as regularly as they should have, according to Mother – and after warming ourselves by the fire only to leave the living room and get cold again ten minutes later, Sophia and me had nothing left to do but look out of the window of our bedroom.

Getting sleepy as the sky darkened between day and night, Sophia and I looked through rain bubbles at nothing in particular: the Lane to our right, outbuildings in the middle, and the cemetery to the left. Sophia pointed at the Lane. ‘Look!’ I looked, and saw Farmer Barry’s lorry, squiggly in a rain bubble.

Farmer Barry’s lorry turned round in the courtyard so its back faced us. Farmer Barry had brought Father home from work. Father normally came home from work as he set out: on his bicycle. The bicycle was on the back of the lorry.

Also on the back of the lorry: a shining black coffin.

‘Is that for us?’ asked Sophia.

I told her I didn’t think so.

‘How do you know?’ she enquired.

‘We need two. They’d be small and white.’

Four eyes – ours – shifted from the lorry past the outhouses to the cemetery, or, as we sometimes called it, the back garden.

‘Who’s it for, then?’

‘I don’t know. Somebody dead.’

‘But nobody’s dead.’

‘Granny Hazel nearly is.’

‘Who’s it for, then?’

‘Granny Hazel, probably.’

We couldn’t sleep. Tough luck. Mother – who was cross with herself for having forgotten our hot water bottles – made us get our nightshirts on, tucked us in and kissed us. When she left, we got up and looked out of the window again.

I wanted to go to the hot sun, but Sophia wanted to go to the cool moon. We went to the cool moon, and built sandcastles with moon-dust and played the same games we played in the courtyard.

Coming home from the moon, we saw a dot of murky light: the Manse. We flew over black trees and black hills of green. The Manse grew as we flew closer; the dot of murky light became our bedroom window.

‘There’s us,’ said Sophia.

Our heads were two pale orbs behind rain-bubbled glass. Then our heads were two pale orbs with eyes. Sophia and I were two sad faces looking out at ourselves as we flew home from the moon.

Then we were up close through the window and back inside us.

‘The moon’s cold,’ I said.

Sophia said we could go to the sun tomorrow.

As far as our eyes could see through the window, they saw nothing but night. Out there, past the clouds where night met the sky, there were stars. There were hundreds and hundreds of stars. Thousands. Millions – and whatever’s bigger than millions – of stars.

Beautiful Mother, soot on her cheeks – her smiles would have been no less treasures had there been more of them – Mother must have floated upstairs, as she sometimes did, because we didn’t hear the stairs creaking. Normally, the stairs creaked louder than the walls and roof. We heard the door, though. On each of our bedside tables, beside each of our lumpy beds, a dim candle burned in a glass bowl.
Between
the candles, in the space between our beds, our bottoms in nightshirts were side by side, and the backs of our fine blond heads.

We turned round to see Mother’s candle entering the bedroom, then Mother with our forgotten hot water bottles. ‘Get into bed,’ she whispered, cross because we were freezing to death in our nightshirts without enough sense to get back under the blankets. ‘What are you looking at out there? There’s nothing to see. You’ve nothing on your feet. Honestly!’

She pulled back the blankets on Sophia’s bed and inserted a hot water bottle. Sophia got in. Mother folded the blankets over her like sealing an envelope. I got into my bed, and my hot water bottle joined me seconds later. ‘Go straight to sleep, and no talking.’ She blew out our candles and closed our bedroom door tight, leaving us alone with the Dark, the Cold and the Night Noises.

‘Why did she whisper?’ whispered Sophia.

My shrug was lost on my twin without candlelight, unless, with bigger earholes than me, she heard a shrug in the rusty bedsprings or frozen sheets.

‘Are you awake?’ I pretended to be asleep. ‘Edward! Edward, wake up. Are you asleep?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Why did Mother whisper?’

‘It’s been a whispery day.’

‘Why’s it been a whispery day?’

‘Some days just are.’

My answer satisfied her. It satisfied me too.

Some days were whispery the way some days were sad. Some days were noisy the way some days were happy. Whispery sad days and noisy happy days went together in a satisfying way, the way toast and jam go together although toast is hard and jam is runny.

I had a hot water bottle, which satisfied me too, because it meant my feet would soon defrost. In the absence of knitted bed hats, we pulled our blankets up to our eyes. We were snug although our
exposed
foreheads were chilly. Cold that ruled the day gone by, at night turned our faces straight like icicles.

Sophia and I had agreed, long before candles-out, and without need for words, that we should be quiet and sad too, although we felt happy – which was probably a sin. We were quiet and happy, but happy in a sad way because of Father’s sadness at Granny Hazel’s illness, which we thought we should share. We needed no one to tell us. We did not need to tell each other. Sophia and I just knew, the way we knew how to fly: tomorrow would be different.

Tomorrow, we would begin to forget how to fly.

‘Edward,’ said Sophia.

‘I’m asleep.’

‘I saw the White Lady with the fuzzy face. Did you see her too?’

‘Yes.’

The White Lady with the fuzzy face was our ghost. When someone saw her, it meant somebody was going to die. I hadn’t really seen her; I told Sophia a lie because I didn’t want my twin to be all alone and afraid when she saw the White Lady with the fuzzy face.

Later … we should have been asleep, and maybe we were until the stairs creaked and the stairs creaked and the stairs creaked again. The landing floorboards at the top of the stairs creaked. The handle of our door grated and the door groaned open. We were four wide eyes, watching. A candle. A hand. An arm. Mother. Mother returned to our bedroom with the candle making her face look like the sun in night-time.

Sophia rose on her elbows in her bed and I rose on mine in mine.

‘Granny Hazel has passed on,’ said Mother, with neither sorrow nor a smile. I felt odd in a tingly way down my spine. ‘I just thought I’d let you know. There’s nothing you need to do. There’s nothing anyone can do. Go to sleep now, it’s late. Be brave.’

She and her candle left the room, closed the door tight again, and left us inside on our elbows with the Dark and the Cold. We had each
other
, and Mother had been brave. Sophia and I borrowed some of her bravery, although we didn’t know for sure what to do with it.

Granny Hazel took ill a week before Farmer Barry brought Father, his bicycle and the coffin home in his lorry. We saw her taking ill as it happened, Sophia and me, and Mother and Gregory and Edgar too. All of us children were born in the Manse and had lived there all our short lives. Granny Hazel was born in the Manse too, and had lived there all her very long life.